A/N: Guess who's supposed to be writing a legal memo? Lyrics below from "Wrong Direction" by Passenger.
It gets under your shirt, like a dagger or worse
The first cut is the deepest but the rest will flippin' hurt
Her first thought is that the kid's going to try to sell her Girl Scout cookies. Which is ridiculous, because the kid is a little boy in a neat blue blazer with a very hopeful expression.
Her second thought never really forms, because the words I'm your son are bowling her over and she's tripping backwards and shutting the door like that's going to turn back time.
She can't breathe, can't really move, and the words not here, not now, not what I wished for—just keep running through her mind too many times in too few seconds.
She's faced scarier crap than this. (Probably). So she opens the door and the kid drinks her orange juice and tells a fancy yarn and even though she doesn't call the cops or CPS or whatever, that doesn't make this the right time.
The whole point being, of course, that it's never the right time. She is busy, and moderately successful, if success can be reached or defined in a career that nobody likes, that brings no work friends or after-hours beers, a life devoid of laughter.
She is unattached. Unattached, right up until this very moment. And being alone isn't the same as being free, but sometimes it's the closest you can get.
(But.)
(God, this kid is cute.)
He doesn't look like he did in her dreams, but his eyes and his voice seem right. Not the right time, not now, not ever—but it's right. And that's the scariest thought of all.